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After a process of narrowing down about 70 maps, most members of the Oxnard City Council have put their support behind one that separates the city into six districts for council representation, with two in south Oxnard.

During a special meeting Wednesday, four council members backed a map drawn by advocacy group Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. The map, listed as 635 on the city’s website, would keep most of the city’s nearly 50 neighborhoods intact while placing current council members in different districts.

Mayor Tim Flynn did not express support for the map drawn by CAUSE but did not rule it out, either.

“When it really comes down to it, I can live with any of these maps,” Flynn said. “It’s not the end of the world, no matter what map we chose.”

Flynn said he wanted two other maps in contention — maps 622 and 626, drawn by Jason Benites and Karl Lawson, respectively.

At the next meeting on Feb. 20, the council is expected to finalize the map so it can vote on a district elections ordinance on Feb. 27.

Under threat of a lawsuit, the city is undergoing a public engagement process as it considers transitioning to electing council members by district instead of at-large. Oxnard resident Arthur “AJ” Valenzuela, who is threatening to sue the city, said the current at-large voting system is in violation of the state’s voting rights act.

If approved initially on Feb. 27 and finalized by a second vote on March 6, a district election system will have voters picking a council member who lives in their own area of the city. The mayor would continue to be picked by all voters.

During this process, the City Council can opt to add more seats to the current five-member body. Most agreed that adding two seats is best.

Councilman Bert Perello wanted to add four more seats, but that idea didn’t gain much traction.

“Beating a dead horse is not a pretty picture,” Perello said.

But City Attorney Stephen Fischer said the council can decide to add seats in the future and restart the public engagement process.

The city will have to revisit the maps, anyway. The maps currently under consideration are drawn using data from 2010, statistics that are quite old for a growing city like Oxnard.

After the 2020 U.S. census, the city will have to redraw the maps. Valenzuela hopes by then that an independent redistricting commission would be established to craft new maps.

“When it really comes down to it, I can live with any of these maps. It's not the end of the world no matter what map we chose.”

Mayor Tim Flynn

On Wednesday, the fifth public hearing on the issue, there was some attention paid to a map created by Benites, the city’s assistant police chief. Benites’ map is unique in that the districts were drawn in a way that does not split any neighborhoods.

But Councilman Oscar Madrigal pointed out that keeping individual neighborhoods intact can split up multiple neighborhoods that share commonalities.

For example, the map submitted by Benites places the city’s La Colonia and Rose Park neighborhoods in different districts when the neighboring communities share a lot in common, Madrigal said. Another map earlier supported by Flynn splits La Colonia into separate districts.

“For Rose Park and La Colonia to be gerrymandered, that’s a slap in the face to anyone who lives there, legal or not,” Madrigal said. “If that were to go through, honestly, I would not be able to go to a neighborhood meeting and look at those people in the face.”

Madrigal said there’s more to the city than neighborhood districts.

“If you keep them intact, you’re actually breaking up bigger blocks of the city,” he said.